Cheesman Park Monday, May 18, 2009

The pavilion in Denver's Cheesman Park was built with money donated by the widow of Denver pioneer Walter Cheesman about 100 years ago.

I was in Colorado on business last weekend, with jobs Friday evening, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. That left a fair bit of time in between to explore Denver and the Front Range (as the area is known). I love exploring new places, so there was lots to see.

If you've never been to the Mile High City (like me, before Friday), the geography is pretty strange: the city itself is very flat. But immediately west of the city, WHAM! Mountains, with a capital M.

From the pavilion in Cheesman Park (in central Denver), apparently you can see mountains 150 miles away. I've lived near mountains since I came to the United States seven years ago, first in Nevada and now here in Oregon. But the Colorado mountains are a lot different than those where I've lived. In northern Nevada, the mountains are described as "basin and range," with wide flat valleys between long ranges of mountains. Here in Oregon, the Cascade range is a series of large, widely-spaced volcanic peaks amongst a series of lower hills. In Colorado, though, the mountains are a seemingly continuous field of rugged snowcapped crags packed in as densely as possible. But for photos from up in the mountains you'll have to wait until the next post.